Venice

(6-27-06)

We arrived in Venice and spent the better part of an hour flailing around with a new currency, a new language, and a new city that mapquest has yet to discover. We eventually found the campground where we dropped off our packs, refilled our water bottles, and embarked on our tour of Venice. We rode the water shuttle along the grand canal before getting off at the Basillica of San Marco. After viewing the beautiful interior (also famous as the number 1 tourist trap in Italy) we got back on the water taxi and had dinner near the beaches of Lido, one of the adjacent islands. Our waiter seemed very distracted throughout the meal, as did the entire restaurant staff. Eventually Italy scored a goal on Australia, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and we got to eat our dinner amidst the symphony of car horns, fireworks, and screaming Itallians. We returned to the square of St. Marcos, where we took the elevator to the top of the tower just in time to catch the sunset. From the top of the tower we could hear 4 seperate orchestras warming up around the square, so we went back down and grabbed a table next to the one playing Con te partiro. After putting down a couple of espressos, we returned to the campground where we found college students from all over the world participating in one huge drunken orgie. We decided to forgo this opportunity to live like a European, and although I'm sure Rick Steves would have been disappointed, the images from studying Sodom and Gomorrah in BSF this past year were a little difficult to erase.